Basics

Who is Running Chicken?

We are a San Francisco-based non-profit that partners with a local organization in rural Kenya to kick-start community designed and owned development projects. Our mission is to provide resources so that grassroots solutions that respond to authentic community needs can be developed, tested and implemented. In the future, we envision that successful approaches will be shared with other organizations and communities. We embark on this partnership with as much transparency and accountability to our partner, the community we work with and supporters as possible. No one in the US receives any sort of compensation for the work and we have zero overhead, meaning that 100% of funds raised go directly to work on the ground.

Our Mission

Our mission is to provide support and resources to on-the-ground development organizations so that grassroots ideas and innovations for community improvement have an opportunity to be developed, tested, implemented and shared with other organizations and communities.

Our Basic Projects

Running Chicken supports a few key projects, the most prominent of which is Children’s Rescue Mission, a small children’s home that started over a decade ago as a community-based effort to provide simple provisions of food and supplies to vulnerable children wherever they stayed. The children’s home opened in 2006 with about a dozen students, but following a scourge election violence in 2008, that number increased substantially. Besides providing support for general operating costs (including medical care and school supplies/uniforms/fees), we have managed campaigns to build a library, and provide water tanks and a stove. We also support infrastructure development at the local primary school, mainly focusing on nutrition and sanitation. A nutritious mid-day meal helps students do their best and also guarantees at least one meal every day (even during weekends and holidays). We also conducted a campaign in 2008 to build new latrines on the school campus. Finally, we launch funding campaigns to resource small, short-term projects such as malaria education and bed net distribution, HIV/AIDS prevention workshops, school uniform distribution and job training for widows. These campaigns help identify opportunities to scale-up promising projects in the community.

Why the Name?

We recently changed our name from GlobalEyes to Running Chicken. We wanted to move away from the more serious and cerebral branding of GlobalEyes to the lighter, more fun branding of Running Chicken. We feel this is more in touch with the spirit of our work. The “running chicken” is inspired by a story from our team’s first visit to Kenya. This is more than a funny story though – the chicken represents wholesomeness, nutrition and sustainability. Livestock and animal husbandry are critically important to the livelihoods of the communities we work with and the projects that we collaborate to develop and implement.

Running Chicken

GlobalEyes is relaunching as Running Chicken! Join us as we roll out a new name, new logo, new website, new twitter account and new online shop for African art.

Running Chicken is a California-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Please browse our site – learn about our mission and how we collaborate with our Kenya-based partner to design and implement community-based development projects. Discover what makes us different from a traditional “non-profit.”

We encourage and appreciate your feedback so please feel free to contact us. Thanks for visiting and we hope to see you again soon.